That Infamous Day

February 2, 1986|By Robert McNeill, United Press International

And I Was There, by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, USN (Morrow, $19.95): This latest account of how the Japanese caught the American Army and Navy by surprise at Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, was written by Layton, a retired rear admiral who was present during the attack and died last year at the age of 82. He expounds on the theory that Washington, not the local commanders in Hawaii, was mostly responsible for the disaster in which 18 U.S. warships were either sunk, capsized or damaged, and 2,403 people were killed. The book further indicts the highest Navy Department intelligence officers, and plows new ground at the summit level, suggesting the Soviet Union might have played a part in the U.S. decision to lay down what the Japanese considered an ultimatum 11 days before the attack.